Lady Hogwarts' Ward
by Tocka e
Summary: With a Harry who has begun to discover magic on his own, a castle who decides she will do everything in her power to keep him happy and safe, and several males who want to be more than just his friend, things are bound to get interesting. Smart!Harry
1. Prologue

**AN: So I have begun yet another story, my second in the HP-verse to be uploaded on ffdotnet, and the one my mind is currently most obsessed with. I have a very fickle muse, you see.**

**I hope it will be of sufficient standard, I have proofread it both once and twice, but since I have no beta, it would be very much appreciated if you would leave me a review if you stumble upon some major typo – perhaps a misunderstanding of mine concerning the English language and its expressions, grammar and alike, it is not my native language after all – so that I can go back and correct it to improve the quality of my work.**

**Disclaimer: **It is not I, who own the renowned universe where one Harry James Potter reside, but someone else whom I imagine make a great deal more money a month, than I do myself.

I will, however, admit that I play around quite a bit in earlier stated universe, whether it be with intent of improvement or simply to mess around and make, well, a mess.

The plot and the maybe-I'm-not-yet-sure-there-are-going-to-be-any OCs, I claim as my own, and if they happen to resemble the ideas of other fanfiction-authors out there, I feel inclined to remind you that it is rather hard to be completely original given the massive number of HP-fics out there. Hopefully you understand my point, if not, oh well….

**Rating: **MA, I believe.

**Summary: **When Harry can't seem to make friends in school, believing it to be because of his own "freakishness", he decides that if he has to be abnormal, he might as well go all out. With a Harry who has begun to discover magic on his own, a castle who decides she will do everything in her power to keep him happy and safe, and a whole bunch of males who feel more for him than simple friendship, just what is in store for magical Britain and the rest of the wizarding world?

Smart!Harry, Manipulative!Dumbledore, Harry/male!Harem, Sentient!Hogwarts.

**Warnings: **Slash, that is to say m/m and maybe even f/f relationships, explicit sexual situations, male!Harem, gore and torture I expect but aren't completely sure of as of yet.

Regarding the sexual situations there will be a fair amount of kinks, not sure exactly which though seeing as I have yet to write the scenes themselves, bur expect a certain amount of bondage, threesomes, double-penetration, dirty-talking and so many other things I will think of as time goes on.

**Enjoy**

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**Prologue**

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Hogwarts.

A castle, a school, a being like no other, having a mind that stretched from the highest point of the astronomy tower to the lowest pit in the dungeons, able to be nowhere and everywhere at the same time.

In the history of this grand school for magical children and teenagers, a place of wonders and everyday miracles, there had been some people the lady-castle herself had liked. Various individuals she had enjoyed watching as they made their way into adulthood, and would often remember with a soft smile on her, admittedly hypothetical, lips.

Among this small percentage of fine wizards and witches our dear lady favored enough to take more notice of, there were a few who she went out of her way to help, teach and encourage, a few who she considered more important to her than others. A few who she would always check in on at night to make sure they were safe and in no harm.

And of these few few people, there were some whom our highness loved. Loved like a mother would her child, whose wellness meant more to her than even her own stone-walls. Among these men and women, the four founders counted.

Godric Gryffindor, with all his sweet bravado and sometimes awkward bluntness.

Rowena Ravenclaw, with a mind like few others, always wanting to know more, understand more.

Helga Huffepuff, who loved more than most and always had an ear to borrow when one were down.

Salazar Slytherin, with a stone-will to succeed and the brains to do so, but still fiercely protective of those he cared for.

They had been the ones who helped make her who she was today, even though even before that she had been almost sentient, when they were done with her, she was her own person. So there really was no surprise that those four, were among the people she loved above all, and had felt it in her very soul when they had moved on to another world, leaving her behind, silent agony tearing at her walls.

After them there had been a scarce number of others, but as the centuries wore on, Hogwarts felt herself hardening, with so many humans and alike rushing through her very being, she grew rather distant, and felt her somewhat-requirements for becoming a child of hers grow, until it had been several centuries since her last loved one, and the loneliness and coldness in her only continued to grow as she felt herself so lacking in love.

But then he came. Her sweet, sweet child, so broken and alone. Like her, yet not. She had known the very instance he had stepped on her ground, the precise moment she had felt his brightly shining core reach out to her own, that this one, this lovely small wizard, was the one who could help her feel again. For real, like she had when the founders had walked the earth.

She would protect him, love and nurture him, and severely punish all those who hurt him. She would make sure that he was cared for, and would protect him from those whose wishes, dreams and ambitions meant harm for her ward. Because she knew her child was important, had felt the awe from the others, learned of whom he was and what had been done to him as she had searched the minds of those unaware of her sentience, and she was not pleased with what she had found. Not in the teachers, not in the other students, not in the boy himself and most certainly not in those small glimpses of thoughts she caught from her the schools appointed headmaster. She would have to make sure that she protected her loved on fiercely from Albus Dumbledore; the man had too many schemes and manipulations meant for her boy, some of which had already taken place and begun. Yes, she would have to keep a close eye on that one, lest he make damage hard to undo.

Most wizards and witches had come to see Hogwarts as a school and nothing but. Had come to consider her just another magical building, with no mind of her own. Albus most certainly didn't believe her to be so, but even he underestimated her something hideous.

An underestimation she felt both appreciation and indignation for. Appreciation because it would certainly prove useful when working against him, and indignation because even castles have their pride.

She had felt almost instantly as she had reached out to get a feel of all the new first-years, that her chosen one didn't, underestimate her that is, and it pleased something enormous to know that.

She wondered absentmindedly what house he would be placed in as she watched the sorting begin, a small blonde girl scurrying up to sit on the small chair and place the worn old hat, one of her very few companions still alive - or something like that - and talked to from time to time, seeing as her mind was not at just one place, but everywhere at once, on her head before the dark cloth yelled out where she fitted best, and the hall erupted in pleased clapping.

It wasn't long before her child was called, and began walking forward as if on his death row, the muffled speculations of what he was like and where he'd end up occurring all around him before the hat had promptly been picked up a shoved onto his unruly head, slipping down past his nose, and everyone fell silent, waiting for the verdict as if it were they themselves once again getting sorted.

She noted that this was the first time in many a year that the hat had taken so long to decide placement, and couldn't help but feel a little self-satisfactory that she had been right once again in her deduction that with her new loved one arriving things were bound to get interesting.

'_Harry Potter_', she tried the name, feeling almost giddy as she saw the mouth on her leathery friend open wide for a shout.

Yes, things were about to get very interesting indeed.

**-x-x-x-**

**AN: So, that was the prologue. Any thoughts? I'd really appreciate them, whether they be corrections, suggestions or simply hopes for a quick update. There are few things that motivates an author like reviews, and I admit to be quite addicted to them, but know that I will never hold my story hostage just for reviews, as an avid reader more than an writer I abhor such childishness. As soon as I've proofread a chapter I will post it, however short or long time that might take me.**

**CC says goodnight, or to be more correct, good **_**morning**_**, I'm now going to sleep and maybe continue that dream about rubber-ducks, bus-drivers and aliens I had the other night. There where such nice colors…**


	2. Chapter 1: When One Wants

**AN: **Hello again! Here comes the first chapter of LHW and I hope it is satisfactory.

And a big hug and many thanks for all those who put my story on their alert/favourite list, and even more so if you left a review. They're really appreciated :)

**Disclaimer: **See prologue

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**Chapter 1: When One Wants…**

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Harry Potter had always known he was different. He had known it before he had seen all the other kids at pre-school, before he knew he could talk to snakes, before he turned his teacher's hair blue.

Before his relatives named him freak.

He had felt it, deep within him, from before the first day he could consciously remember, that those who walked among him lacked something vital which he possessed in abundance. But, in turn, he lacked some things which almost all others took for granted. Home, family, food.

Love.

He had none of that, and he doubted it would be something he could get or was even allowed to have before he passed on, who would want someone like him anyway, he reasoned. He was different, full of colour and light where others were dull and bland, brimming with something unknown, always there, just below the surface waiting anxiously to lash out.

He was small, thin, bony, weak, scorned, scarred and broken.

Freak.

So when he had first started school, and none of the kids in his class wanted to become friends with him, it just confirmed his belief in his own lack of worth. He had nothing, was worth nothing, deserved nothing. And in that moment, when he felt all the small, scratched pieces of the puzzle which was him suddenly match and fit together, no matter how wrong and fallacious the picture that had come forth may have seemed to someone else, the small raven-haired boy named Harry Potter decided that if couldn't escape being an unwanted freak, he might as well indulge himself completely. Bask in his own abnormality, the glow deep within him. The brightly shining ball of a rainbow which like he had seen in no other, not even in those weirdly clad men and women who sometimes visited the strange cat-lady down the street, softly as they may shine themselves.

That was when he first for real discovered just what the glow within him meant, some of what it could do and how it affected him and his surroundings. He understood that it was the glow that had made his hair grow back during the night when his aunt had shaved it off, that it was the reason the shirt he had been forced to wear had shrunken till doll-sized when washed and that it was behind his sudden teleportation to the roof when Dudley and his friends had chased him.

He didn't know what this power of his was or who those weird peoples were, but he knew some of what it could do, as evident of his previous excursions, and he was determined to discover more. The power-source itself he just called the glow, since it shone so beautifully.

He would never come to like the word freak, even if he had resolved to embrace his oddness, but he decided that it was a small price to pay – he was paying it already after all – to be called as such if it meant he could do more than just grow hair at an abnormally fast pace.

If it meant he could be more.

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The first thing Harry did when he woke up in his dark cupboard the first Saturday after he had begun school, was to pry out the board he had loosened some years prior from the sidewall and pick up the tattered journal that lay hidden inside. He had found it in a trashcan by the library some months ago, ragged, dirty with just a hint of the blue colour it had originally possessed lingering on its covers, but it had been almost unused, and Harry considered it his most prized possession.

It was in his notebook that he wrote down all those things he wasn't allowed to say out loud, where he shared all his moments without inhibitions and the only place that he could for just a moment be Harry, not boy or freak or _him_.

He had collected a few pencils as well, a blue ballpoint pen with a bank-company's logo on it, two lead pencils with a soft grey tone and four crayons used for colouring which were red, yellow, purple and green. None of them were whole, the ballpoint missed the soft part where you should put your fingers and the other ones either were broken off and thus shortened or they had been bitten to oblivion. But they were his and they worked regardless so he loved them.

He opened the journal and quickly found the page where he had stopped writing the last time he had needed to vent, he had decided almost immediately that he could only write when he needed to get something out of his system, otherwise he'd quickly run out of pages. He laid down the worn object in his lap and reached inside his hidden safe again to get a pen. The purple one, he liked the colour a lot, he decided after a short while.

The reason he was going to write this time was for once not because he needed to vent something, but that he felt that since he had decided he was going to try to get better at all this weird stuff that he could do, it would be of use to him to write it down.

He was smart, he knew, smarter than Dudley and he was good at both thinking and writing and a lot of other stuff, some he just knew without having a clue as to how, but he had always found it easier to understand and find order in things if he wrote them down so he could see the words. He learned from listening well enough, many years of eavesdropping coming to good use, but he learned even better if he could watch things as it happened, observe the process and the results.

First thing he had decided to do was to scribble down all the weird stuff that he had done in his short life, those that Dudley or Piers or Malcolm had never been able to. Those that if noticed earned him a harsh slap in the face and an uncertain amount of time locked in his cupboard with even less food than usual. Those happenings which made him different.

_What I've done:_

_Turned teacher's hair blue_

_Shrunken a shirt in the washer_

_Teleported to roof_

_Healed injuries quickly_

_Fast hair-growth_

_Unlocked cupboard-door_

_Talked with snakes_

Harry stopped there, the pen still attached to the bottom of the last s. He was sure that he had missed some things, things that might have happened before he could remember, things that were hardly noticeable, but those were the major stuff.

But _how_ had he done it? How had he made it possible?

He pondered that a bit, nothing coming to mind that would work in all scenarios, with the exception of the glow itself, and the drain he sometimes felt afterwards, before he had come up with an idea.

His will.

While true that he had never wanted to turn Ms Fisher's hair blue, never wanted a doll-sized shirt and not once felt a need to enjoy the non-existent view from the school-roof, he had wanted something. And even though he hadn't chosen the methods himself he had gotten the result he had sought.

He had wanted Ms Fisher to stop her cross-examination of him, and it had when all the other children in the classroom had started laughing at her new hair-style.

He never wanted to wear that particular nasty shirt again and he didn't have to since it fit him no longer.

He wanted to escape his cousin and his friends during their Harry-hunt, and escape he had, though he had to receive help from the janitor to get down on the ground again afterwards.

He wanted the pain on his back from the repeated lashings to go away and while he still had the scars to tell the tale, he hadn't been forced to live in agony for more than an hour afterwards.

He wanted his hair back the way it was, because frankly, he looked like shit when bald, and lo and behold, it had returned.

He had wanted, or more correctly _needed_, to go to the bathroom as soon as possible so that he wouldn't soil himself and have Vernon unleash even more of his anger-issues on him, that the unlocking of his cupboard had come as a blessing from above.

He had desperately wanted someone to talk to, someone to call friend and share both his pain and those precious, even more so since there were so few, happy memories that when the garden snake's hissing had somehow become understandable, ha hadn't stopped speaking till long after sundown.

He had _wanted_, so something had happened.

A smile slowly made an appearance on his face, a tiny bit more smug than happy, and Harry was just barely able to constrain himself from laughing out loud in glee.

Harry Potter would make sure to _want_ a lot more in the future than he ever had before.

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**AN: **So what do you think? Good, bad, confusing?

As for the future of my story and how it will develop, I've planned to hop directly to the train to Hogwarts in the next chapter and do everything that has happened in between in flashbacks. The reason for that is that I simply don't _know_ exactly what there has happened, so I'll just add more stuff as I need them instead of having to go back and rewrite and complicate it for everyone… It also has an additional effect that I'll probably be able to produce chapters at a faster rate, which is a good thing.

So be prepared to meet _people_ and experience _conversations_ in the next chapter, for next up is the Hogwarts Express! ;)

CC


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